hat a small piece
of white bandage could be seen; and, as he lifted his face, it was seen to
be that of a negro.

"Inspector Nettings," Hewitt said ceremoniously, "allow me to introduce
Mr. Cesar Rameau!"

Netting's gasped.

"What!" he at length ejaculated. "What! You--you're Rameau?"

The negro looked round nervously, and shrank farther from the door.

"Yes," he said; "but please not so loud--please not loud. Zey may be near,
and I'm 'fraid."

"You will certify, will you not," asked Hewitt, with malicious glee, "not
only that you were not murdered last Saturday by Victor Goujon, but that,
in fact, you were not murdered at all? Also, that you carried your own
body away in the usual fashion, on your own legs."

"Yes, yes," responded Rameau, looking haggardly about; "but is not
zis--zis room publique? I should not be seen."

"Nonsense!" replied Hewitt rather testily; "you exaggerate your danger and
your own importance, and your enemies' abilities as well. You're safe
enough."

"I suppose, then," Nettings remarked slowly, like a man on whose mind
something vast was beginning to dawn, "I suppose--why, hang it, you must
have just got up while that fool of a girl was screaming and fainting
upstairs, and walked out. They say there's nothing so hard as a nigger's
skull, and yours has certainly made a fool of me. But, then, _somebody_
must have chopped you over the head; who was it?"

"My enemies--my great enemies--enemies politique. I am a great man"--this
with a faint revival of vanity amid his fear--"a great man in my countree.
Zey have great secret club-sieties to kill me--me and my fren's; and one
enemy coming in my rooms does zis--one, two"--he indicated wrist and
head--"wiz a choppa."

Rameau made the case plain to Nettings, so far as the actual circumstances
of the assault on himself were concerned. A negro whom he had noticed near
the place more than once during the previous day or two had attacked him
suddenly in his rooms, dealing him two savage blows with a chopper. The
first he had caught on his wrist, which was seriously damaged, as well as
excruciatingly painful, but the second had taken effect on his head. His
assailant had evidently gone away then, leaving him for dead; but, as a
matter of fact, he was only stunned by the shock, and had, thanks to the
adamantine thickness of the negro skull and the ill-direction of the
chopper, only a very bad scalp-wound, the bone being no more than grazed.
He had